Re: Once again ...

Obvious init? You can tell by the trees this isn't the ground floor, the problem with Skynet was always that it was in an underground bunker, when this bleeder suddenly tries to take over the world you just open the window and shove her out, problem solved BOFH style!

Re: Telstra unaware?

Basically Telstra couldn't give a shit! The last bill I saw from telstra for where I work basically had a link on the page that said, "click here to log into your account and pay your bill," despite years of warning to not click on links in emails. Not even a suggestion to go to the website and log in, how easy is that?

The last time I received a phone call from Telstra they asked for my username and password so they could be sure they were talking to the right person. The drone on the other end of the phone must have fallen off her chair when I asked her to authenticate herself as a telstra employee and not a scammer after my un/pw. I asked for a name or employee number so that I could call back on Telstra's public number to be sure I was talking to them, nope I had to give them un/pw with no way to verify they actually were from telstra.

They are so far behind the security 8 ball it looks like a 2 ball to them, basic security measures the intelligent IT aware person adopts routinely are arcane knowledge to their CSR's, we are doomed I tells ya, DOOOMED!!!

Re: And of course: To hell with the ocean environment

"We're going to hear a lot about bozo science in the coming years. This example of Short Term Thinking, Long Term Disaster has to be an historical marker for a clear beginning of The Era Of Bad Science, what I also call The Age Of Trivia."

Actually no, electricity started off as an essentially useless intellectual curiosity and nothing more, if someone had jumped up then and demanded we end all research into what was essentially a useless phenomena where would we be today? Pure research, the basic stuff, should have no thought to the end uses of its subject, however because most governments these days have now decided that research should only be conducted into areas where there is demonstrable financial return scientists are having to resort to ridiculous suggestions to continue to receive funding.

For instance supercavitation in water may have no foreseeable useful function, but it may lead to way to reduce friction and drag in other media, air for instance, but unless we do the basic research we will never know where anything will lead.

Re: Why?

And I believe it was once commented that 50% of the population of the United States were of below average intelligence. I will take your comment as sarcasm until demonstrated otherwise but will add, it's not the below average that's the problem it's the distribution of that proportion of the workers that could be the issue. If 50% of the workforce are performing below average, and 100% of those below average workers are in the one facility then you have a problem.

Well what do you know, next thing you know the church will be making Alan Turing a saint, hang on didn't they already kill him with homosexual discrmination? How does it feel, Mr Pope, to be praising something as a gift from god that relies on modern computers while at the same time knowing that the man who helped create modern computers was a sinful homosexual who assuredly went directly to hell after the twin sins of homsexuality and suicide. Hypocritical bastard, I hope this modern method of communication gets my message to him, mind you his no doubt heavily censored link to the world outside the vatican won't let him see ideas and opinions his minders don't want him to hear or see.

Re: amazon.com

"here in germany half the bag woud be air, "

You get sweets in your bags of air? In Australia finding something edible in your bag of air is a bonus only topped by actually managing to get it open without employing teeth/scissors or a plasma cutter.

Re: @Steve Brooks 01:48

But seriously, I have a facebook account because ppl were putting stuff they wanted me to see on facebook, and whenever I went to look at it facebook told me I needed an account to view it...sigh!

Now lets go to my facebook page intentionally (for the first time ever) and see what's there! Nope nothing except two people who I have never heard of want to be my friend, whoohoo, no sorry, wrong phrase, to many o's and w's and not enough u's, c's, k's and f's. Guess I am not contributing much to facebooks's business model!

So you get google to build them into your prescription lenses, so then it's illegal to drive with them, and illegal to drive without them, nooo a paradox the world is ending!!! Nah just joking the world isn't en.........

Re: Not "complying" is the crime, not the results of complying.

Actually no, the equivalent would be, "you must tell us where you hid the evidence." What this lets them do is to jail you whether they have evidence or not, simply because you refused to tell them where you hid the evidence, but more importantly, it lets them jail you whether or not any evidence actually exists. This not only saves them the bother of finding evidence, it also saves them the bother of finding criminals, since everybody can be presumed guilty simply by asking the question.

Last one I had I used a well known fictitious computer as a stand in, when you tell them all you are getting is an ++out of cheese++ error they start to get confused. Of course I did tell them they had called Commander Vimes of the Ank-Morpork City Guard first but they didn't seem to get a clue from that, and putting Mr Stibbons on to let them try and fix Hex just didn't get a rise, I guess the Diskworld books don't sell well in India.

You just wait you lot, luckily we got ours thrown out (Australia), but when the time comes for ofcom to make their report, and it turns out that only 20 or so percent of households actually have it turned on , there will be a hue and cry from the "think of the children" brigade along the lines of, "it's not effectively protecting the children because so many irresponsible parents have turned it off, so it MUST be made compulsory".

"Besides, with four USB 3.0 and six Thunderbolt 2.0 ports, there’s plenty of scope for fast external storage. You can hook up six Thunderbolt displays - three if you want to use 4K screens."

Seriously? I have this sleek glass desktop with this amazing cylindrical computer and wireless keyboard/mouse combo, and you want me to clutter it up with a stack of ugly external hard drives? Screw that! Any extra strage is going to be network storage, my futuristic workstation aint going to be cluttered with a stack of square pre-21st century bricks of storage, now make me some amazing looking cylindrical ultra fast WIRELESS storage addons and I might consider it.

Re: WTF?

Perhaps because gold mining entails some level of risk. There's always plenty of gold miners willing to risk life and fortune in the hope of striking it rich, but the only guy with the guaranteed steady income is the one selling them shovels and gold panning gear, and when you have a family the guaranteed steady income is the one you are after.

The point here is that the way it works is a guaranteed steady income, if it worked. The other side is, if it does work, and can be demonstrated to work, keeping it secret is impossible if you are selling it, sooner or later the chinese, through some shell company, would get their hands on one and rip it apart (well actually the same goes for every country in the world I am guessing). So you can make money now selling them, and pretty soon find a thousand other manufacturers doing the same, or you could try and keep it an absolute secret by never selling any and just selling the power.

Of course this would all be illegal, breach of contract, court cases etc etc, but, if it worked, every country in the world would have an army of scientists whose only purpose would be to reproduce the process, and while you can patent a device, copyright a design, the process itself is free for everyone to take advantage of.

It's worse than that, he's dead Jim!

It's worse than that, I recently read some research in the UK showing that lowering the theshold price on VAT to cover lower cost items would increase the workload so much in customs that the surcharge on each and every parcel to cover the extra costs involved would be about 13 pounds. So they add 10% tax to your $200 item to make it $220 (ok it's not exact but it's close enough for the example) then charge you $25 for the pleasure of reaming you, so in fact adding closer to 25% of the cost of the item being imported.

Re: The maddest real computer

More for the sake of a toilet break. I can just imagine, finally defeating the Vogons and getting into the tardis for a toilet break, shower and a long nap only to arrive instantaneously at the next mad computer (and yes I know Vogons didn't exist in the Dr Who universe, but it's time we had a mashup!)

I think assumptions need to be put aside, have you ever called an IT tech to look at a PC that is working perfectly well? Thought not, and a TV episode where the doctor walked in on a well working computer would be remarkable short I am guessing.

The reason it failed was because the US directors, in thier infinite wisdom, placed The Eye of Harmony inside the Tardis itself, and since The Eye of harmony is actually a black hole surrounded by a time field that stops it's decay, placing it inside the time field of the vessel it is supposed to power would lead to catastrophic consequences....hence the new series ended before it began, an eminently fitting result I would say!

Wouldn't be such a big issue if all adobe product users were now required to give their credit card number to use the software, those old fashioned fuddy duddy luddites still using the boxed version must be laughing all the way t'coalface!

Re: re: "Yes"

"presumably complete with in-flight Kool-Aid, has accelerated my vomit flow to such a rate that it can now literally split atoms." Such witty responders as utilising your vomit stream as an interstellar drive to push you all the way out to uranus poured through my head but failed to materialise into anything meaningful so I just decided to leave the toilet humour to those better equiped....(hehehe, I said Ur-anus)

Unfortunately, with a world moving more and more to tablets, this is going to be an issue for the future to deal with. I know entire households that have basically thrown the old computer paradigm out with the old computer and now exist solely on smartphones and tablets, no PC to actually make the bootable drives. It has looked for a while that the humble home service tech was an industry that was simply going to vanish, now I see some hope, if the tablets require a PC to make a recovery disk, and no one except your local friendly service tech actually owns a PC or laptop the industry does indeed look bright.

Re: How to ruin a great idea

We are at that stage already, it's when they find the dunny's broke and they can't flush the resultant mess away until they are replaced by a political party they can blame it all on that the shit really hits the fan.

Re: What would be the point of Sailfish?

The point would be that you are not confined to one OS seller/supplier, and that if that OS seller/supplier decided to do something to the OS that you personally found so unethical that you couldn't possibly purchase a phone using said OS, you actually have an alternative available.

History has shown that forward thinking like this is just so much wasted faffing around, the public decides what the public wants, and no amount of telling them what they want will have any effect. recent examples, 3D TV, MS Surface. The correct procedure is to just keep throwing kit at the great unwashed and see what sticks, I mean who could have predicted that Blackberries would become the chav wannabe communicator or that 7 inch tablets were the way to go.

You just keep feeding raw materials into the factory at one end and pushing kit out the other end, if the masses like your kit you will make billions, if they don't no amount of telling them they should will stop you going bankrupt.

Uses?

Have only ever seen one suggested practical use for a tablet this size, turn it into a tray at a diner, they can then use it to hold food for customers and have runnings ads for the customer to look at while eating. Of course it would be a slightly more expensive than your traditional plastic tray, but from some tablets I have seen around, about the same quality!

Re: Makes me proud

Yeah right. from their policies; "We will not support legislation or public debate that is divisive or disrespectful." So we are going to suppress discussion on issues we don't agree with. The entire point of democracy is that you don't suppress discussion. And also who decides if it is divisive or disprespectful?

And; "Hurts the Australian way of life or penalises the law abiding for the sake of the irresponsible minority, thus making life harder for average Australian families or takes away the right to a “fair go” That's going to be a hard one, who decides what the average australian family is, and if they aren't average does that mean it's fine to pick on them for the benefit of the priveleged "average"? They do realise that almost nothing is at that point don't they, that average's are simply the midpoints of a possibly vast range of possibilities.

Should I also point out that some preferences from said party are directed to One Nation and Pauline Hanson, and as a result these minor party preferneces Pauline Hanson is now a senator, dog save australia, the queen certainly can't.

suckers

Fortunately Melbourne hasn't been inflicted with any of these price rise woes with the introduction of the new system, in fact most people now travel free because the machines tend to break down every 5 minutes, except of course you take the risk of getting caught by, and beaten up by, the railway police. The excuse that the only working machine on the system happens to be the one at the destination station carries little weight, you should have walked there, validated your ticket, walked back and then caught the train there.

Re: The feds are not going to stop themselves

And you would prove this how? By examining the data of course...umm, what data? Your guess, since there is no evidence to present that can ever prove it to be correct, is very likely libelous. Want to defend yourself, just present the "evidence" in court, what? Can't? The problem with these fat sleazeballs is that they have very much the same rights under law that you and I do, including bringing court cases against people who accuse them of crimes without evidence, the data should have been preserved, if only so that you could defend yourself!

Re: Microsoft: "We're always listening to our customers"

Ah yes more fool you then, without the cheap secondhand game market there won't be platinum games editions, who did you think they were competing against? They sell the game for $109.95 until enough people have got tired of playing them and traded them in that the market for new copies tanks, then they release platinum editions at the same price of second hand games to keep the money rolling to them instead of the second hand game shops.

If they can kill the second hand game market they will never need to release cheap platinum edition copies to compete, they will just sell the games at $109.95 until the market is saturated and sales stop, then release the next piece of mindless entertainement at $109.95 etc etc. Gamers will either have to pay the $109.95 or simply never play the game.

Re: Oh, Amazon

And now how about explaining to all the people who have netflix accounts so that thier children can watch Spongebob now also have to pay for an amazon account, but they probably still have to keep thier netflix account for other stuff they watch. The problem with streaming is not really the DRM or the quality, it's the fact that you can't stream everything you want from one location. DRM and the low quality is bad enough, but having to pay multiple times for the ame service? Fail!

Re: How about "Haswell" on LGA 1156 instead of another new socket?

Actually from what I have heard the new CPU's need special low power support in the chipset and BIOS, so a new motherboard would be required anyway. Sure they could make it an LGA 1156, but all that would achieve is to allow people to stuff the CPU into boards without the low power features and BIOS and thereby fry the CPU, so it makes sense, even if it is annoying.

Re: new technology

new technology

Don't really see this argument as valid, yes porn is often the front driver of new technology use, but surely this doesn't qualify as new technology? It's just old technology all wrapped up nicely. When few people were using computers and online payments and etc the old dear from down the road still caught the bus to the shops to purchase her unmentionables, now she justs orders them online to avoid the embarrasment of displaying her intimate stuff in front of that 15yo checkout guy. The technology has become mainstream, it's not new by any means, and the mass of ordinary users is using it for ordinary things.

Now full lifelike 3D holograms? Yes I can see the porn mad jumping onto that....we not literally of course, you will fall through, but it's likely that porn will be the ultimate driver behind the holodeck, screw this accident investigtion, picnic's, old serial re-enactments you see on start trek, we all know the first thing you do when you get your hands on a holodeck is fire up the entire membership of the beach volleyball association and leap in hands akimbo!

Re: NOW will you try Windows Phone 8?

If your life depends on equipment powered by MS software you probably already died at the last BSOD, unfortunately the hardware couldn't sound the emergency buzzer because it was waiting for windows to finish its memory dump and reboot.

" But if Intel is successful, the rest of us should notice absolutely no difference. ®" Ooh look, a tech company that has finally got it, something that MS has failed to grasp. What people want is something that's more stable, faster, more efficient and works on lower level hardware, but appears in every other way to be exactly the same as what I was using before.

Re: Why legs.

Yes, the entire purpose of a pack robot, scout robot etc is to basically go everywhere a human soldier goes, whereas wheeled robots would perforce be limited to flat areas, making them and the humans with them vulnerable to attack, basically suitable only for logistics transport. Tracked would work better, except seeing a bleeding great set of steel track marks from where the scout robot was by spying on you might be a givaway, with legs they can put fake animal pads on the bottom, dress it up like a feral dog and go spy all they want.

Now that's interesting, seems the mix of apple defenders and attackers has markedly changed over the course of these patent cases, I only saw one defender here, and that looks like a poe. While Apple may win this case and the next, the one thing that any seller of mass market premium goods relies on is public opinion, thier billions may keep them going for a while, but unless they change something that pile is eventually going to get smaller instead of bigger.

Re: ability to discern pictures more quickly than words

It's not necessarily the ability to discern words quicker than pictures that's the issue, it's that the words never change. Delete is always delete, paste is always paste, cut is slways cut, but have two programs that do the same thing, or even two versions of the same program, and the pictures to do common functions will be in a small or large way, different, and then starts the hunt. It's even worse when you change the interface style, because then every icon has to change to match the interface, so every icon has to be relearnt, but guess what? Delete is still delete, paste is still psate and cut is still cut.

Re: the PR people need to go to the same place as all the lawyers.

Damn these problems that keep popping up unexpectedaly, oh if only the interent powers that be didn't change the way they address computers on a network every other day, oh hang on thats right they don't, they been using the same system since the internet started, and NOW they realise the have a problem, just before we all switch to IPV6, lol.